page_title: Peter Dunne
section_title: Labour MP
hierarchical_section_title: Peter Dunne / Member of Parliament / Labour MP
caption_attribution_description: English: Peter Dunne
context_page_description: Peter Francis Dunne CNZM is a retired New Zealand politician who was the Member of Parliament for Ōhāriu. He held the seat and its predecessors from 1984 to 2017—representing the Labour Party in Parliament from 1984 to 1994, and a succession of minor centrist parties from 1994. He was the Leader of Future New Zealand from 1994 to 1995, United New Zealand from 1996 to 2000, and United Future from 2000 to 2017.
  He served as a Cabinet minister while in the Labour Party and has since done so in governments dominated by the centre-right National Party as well as by the Labour Party. From 2005 to 2008 he held the posts of Minister of Revenue and Associate Minister of Health as a minister outside of Cabinet with the Labour-led government. After Labour suffered an election defeat in 2008 to the National Party, United Future was reduced to having Dunne as its sole MP. However, in a deal between United Future and National, Dunne retained his two portfolios outside Cabinet. On 7 June 2013 he resigned his warrant as a minister due to a purported leak from his office. He effectively was an independent MP between 25 June 2013 and 13 August 2013 when United Future was temporarily deregistered.
context_section_description: In the 1984 election, Dunne successfully stood for Parliament as a candidate of the Labour Party, winning the seat of Ohariu, defeating sitting National MP Hugh Templeton. Bob Jones, leader of the New Zealand Party (not to be confused with New Zealand First), also stood in the seat, splitting the former National vote and enabling the Labour victory in the seat. Dunne retained the seat in the 1987 election, after which he became a Parliamentary Undersecretary. In 1990, he became Minister of Regional Development, Associate Minister for the Environment, and Associate Minister of Justice. He won his seat again in the 1990 election, but the Labour Party suffered defeat, and Dunne thus lost his ministerial posts.
  In the 1993 election, Dunne won the seat of Onslow, which covered much the same area as his former Ohariu seat. He found himself, however, increasingly at odds with the majority of the Labour Party – Dunne tended to support Labour's right-leaning faction rather than the party's more unionist wing. With the departure of leading right-wingers like Roger Douglas, Richard Prebble and David Caygill he found himself isolated. In October 1994 Dunne resigned from the Labour Party, becoming an independent MP. Soon after he rebuffed an approach by National MP Christine Fletcher to join the National Party. A short time later, he established the Future New Zealand party (not to be confused with a later party of the same name).
caption: Peter Dunne
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